Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

vancedapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 360 posts

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#151

Post by tshaddox »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #126
leetcrew wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely. I personally find categorical imperative arguments to be ridiculous. almost anything could be bad if everyone did them all the time. the reality is that adblocking, torrenting, and similar workarounds are used by a small subset of technically savvy users. most people just don't care enough to configure any…

> I don't feel any obligation to allow Google to use my own device and internet connection to serve me ad content that I don't wish to see. That's disingenuous because you're omitting the other half of the transaction: You are choosing, voluntarily, to consume the content that they are offering on their website. The implied arrangement is that you watch the ads (at least the first five seconds until the skip button a…

> You are choosing, voluntarily, to consume the content that they are offering on their website.

And they are choosing, voluntarily, to serve you videos unbundled from advertisements.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#152

Post by tut-urut-utut »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #126
leetcrew wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely. I personally find categorical imperative arguments to be ridiculous. almost anything could be bad if everyone did them all the time. the reality is that adblocking, torrenting, and similar workarounds are used by a small subset of technically savvy users. most people just don't care enough to configure any…

> I don't feel any obligation to allow Google to use my own device and internet connection to serve me ad content that I don't wish to see. That's disingenuous because you're omitting the other half of the transaction: You are choosing, voluntarily, to consume the content that they are offering on their website. The implied arrangement is that you watch the ads (at least the first five seconds until the skip button a…

As long as Google put something on the web that can be accessed using standard HTTP calls, there’s no obligation on anyone’s side to use the way of consuming that is most convenient for Google. If Google want to control it, they can sell CDs, embed ads inside a video or similar. Or just get of the web. But using HTTP on the internet the way it’s intended to be used is totally ok.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#153

Post by bduerst »

gtirloni wrote: post #119
leetcrew wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely. I personally find categorical imperative arguments to be ridiculous. almost anything could be bad if everyone did them all the time. the reality is that adblocking, torrenting, and similar workarounds are used by a small subset of technically savvy users. most people just don't care enough to configure any…

If Youtube enabled an ad-free experience on a per creator/channel basis , would that be a good compromise for you?

What would that user experience look like? $0.50/mo per channel? $5/mo for all minecraft channels?

Given the overhwelming negative response to how cable priced and bundled channels, and the simplicity that competitors like Netflix have, I'm not sure users would prefer that.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#154

Post by jraph »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #24
wbobeirne wrote: post #18

Asking this question in good faith and in the interest of a productive discussion: Can someone give me their reasoning for why to use this over just paying for YouTube premium? They're providing a service that you value and spend enough time on to warrant looking for a way to not have to view ads, and if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely. It fee…

I feel content on the internet was free for so long, people just feel entitled to it. Now everyone is anti-ad, with most not being able to support an argument as to why targeted ads are bad (like any human at Google cares how user 1839028934 watches vtubers for 8 hours a day), but they still feel entitled to consume content for free.

> most not being able to support an argument as to why targeted ads are bad (like any human at Google cares how user 1839028934 watches vtubers for 8 hours a day)

That's just small pieces of data about you, adding up, that can be requested by potential future governments which turned into totalitarianism.

The less data about us stored somewhere, the safer.

This is what is fundamentally wrong with the "targeted" part in "targeted ads".

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#155

Post by autoexec »

xwx wrote: post #8

Vanced is pretty good. It seems like it's just the official YouTube app but with premium for free. Newpipe is another ad-free YouTube app. https://newpipe.net/ It's FOSS and doesn't use your Google account, or any of the YouTube APIs. You can still manage subscriptions but you have to import them manually.

Newpipe is what I use and I love it. I've seen it break on a few occupations and it could use a bit more polish, but it meets my needs. I might give Vanced a try at some point, but it looks like it wants access to your youtube account and lacks features I use. I'm pretty happy with Newpipe.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#156

Post by pjerem »

Teever wrote: post #82
endisneigh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly don’t care about the creator. At least you’re honest

A very important life rule is to never, ever care about someone more than they care about you.

I don’t see creators as "someone" because creators are mostly little business and the person you see on the video is just acting and reading a script.

So I can treat them as things. And I do care for the things I enjoy in life when I want them to stay or improve. Not because of the person behind (because, you are right, they don’t know me and I don’t know them) but because I care about what their work bring to my life.

The fact that someone is being able to make a decent revenue for this work is a nice externality that I like. But having great knowledge / content freely accessible is what I care.

However I’m not paying for YouTube Premium because I care about the content and not the platform. It wouldn’t make a difference for me if I had to use another platform.

Platforms should be subcontractors of the content producers. I don’t want to pay for the hosting platform but give my money to the content I love. And that a part of that money is used to provide hosting shouldn’t be my business.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#157

Post by yellowapple »

kyriakos wrote: post #121
xwx wrote: post #8

Vanced is pretty good. It seems like it's just the official YouTube app but with premium for free. Newpipe is another ad-free YouTube app. https://newpipe.net/ It's FOSS and doesn't use your Google account, or any of the YouTube APIs. You can still manage subscriptions but you have to import them manually.

Unfortunately it's very buggy and still not ready for full time use. Crashes all the time, importing subscriptions is hard. But it's FOSS and I still use it regardless cause vanced concerns me because it needs access to my account

It's a lot less crashy nowadays (at least from what I can tell from using it daily).

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#158

Post by wbobeirne »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #61
wbobeirne wrote: post #18

Asking this question in good faith and in the interest of a productive discussion: Can someone give me their reasoning for why to use this over just paying for YouTube premium? They're providing a service that you value and spend enough time on to warrant looking for a way to not have to view ads, and if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely. It fee…

On hn I find people often talk about how as individuals we shouldn't ignore the negative externalities we might create for massively profitable monopolies, but never in the same breath do we talk about the negative externalities those monopolies thrust on us as individuals or on our governments. I'm sure most are aware just how well Google will be regardless of whether they bypass ads or not.

My main consideration is for content creators, especially since the ad revenue is passed through to them. Any concern I have about YouTube not being able to sustain itself does not come from a place of caring about Google's livelihood.

I also have a whole laundry list of complaints and gripes about YouTube and Google as a whole. But I'm probably not going to get much productive engagement from them airing those here, so I targeted my question to the HN audience.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#160

Post by vbezhenar »

wbobeirne wrote: post #18

Asking this question in good faith and in the interest of a productive discussion: Can someone give me their reasoning for why to use this over just paying for YouTube premium? They're providing a service that you value and spend enough time on to warrant looking for a way to not have to view ads, and if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely. It fee…

“YouTube premium is not available in your country.”
Post reply on HN